Honestly, you wait the best part of a decade for some of your favourite franchises to come back and then two of them arrive in the same month. Typical, isn’t it?
Not only did March see a new Half-Life game from Valve, but for some of us there was an equally big surprise: the honest to God release of Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord. Well, not quite the full release, it’s in Early Access for the time being, but for those of us that have been following its development for years now, we’ll take it. We’ll absolutely take it.
Now, as you might have seen already, I did find myself briefly sidetracked by a now-patched bug that allowed me to ride around the world of Calradia as an actual baby, slaying bandits and ne’er-do-wells as I went. But aside from that I’ve also managed to clock up nearly 20 hours with Mount and Blade 2, and there’s a lot to take in.
Perhaps I should start by saying that if you tend to avoid Early Access games because they sometimes make you feel like an alpha tester, rather than a paying customer, you might want to hold off on Bannerlord for the time being. The developers have said they don’t expect a full release for another year or so and to be honest, that sounds a little hopeful to me. Parts of the game are either incomplete or broken and there are plenty of bugs to be found, some of which are much less amusing than the aforementioned Bannerlord Baby. And yet, despite all of that, I think this is totally brilliant.